Tag: international trade commission

The 2016 election season has put international trade in the spotlight – or, actually, under the heat lamp – like never before. But just as some of us in the trade policy community started getting big heads over the increasing prominence of our pet issues, the U.S. International Trade Commission released this report yesterday, which concludes that the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, if implemented, would boost real annual GDP by 0.15 percent by the year 2032. In other words, the economic growth from TPP could be wiped out by a single new major EPA regulation. So much for the importance of trade, I guess.

Of course, some will downplay the magnitude of the issue and turn these modest gains into positive talking points to encourage TPP ratification. In addition to GDP, small gains are estimated for real income, employment, and trade, as well.

Others will suggest that the estimates overstate the benefits, as the ITC studies are wont to do. But as Dan Pearson explained a few months ago in this paper, the ITC’s assessments are not intended to be interpreted as projections into the future. They are static comparisons. The TPP study compares today’s economy without TPP to today’s economy with TPP. The results are just estimates of what the various outcome metrics would be ceteris paribus. Accordingly, the utility of the estimates is limited and the validity of the model cannot be tested by comparing real future outcomes to these estimates because in the real world there is no ceteris paribus. Things change.

For example, the model doesn’t take into account things like: supply shocks (such as another fracking-type boom) or demand shocks (such as mass adoption of hand-held devices); transitions from human labor to robots; changes in institutions; the policy reactions of other countries to the TPP; accessions to the agreement by other countries; the impact on the multilateral trading system, and so on. All of these factors matter at least as much as the terms of the TPP itself.

So the question is: Why even bother performing these studies? The real outcomes are determined primarily by information that is unknown and difficult to estimate with reasonable accuracy when the models are run. The results are politicized and misused by advocates and proponents of trade agreements alike.

As it stands now, the ITC is required under the terms of the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 (the Trade Promotion Authority Bill) to conduct an economic impact assessment of a trade agreement within 105 days of the president entering into such an agreement. While there is some useful information to obtain from these assessments, it seems that their greatest utility is to provide political cover to members of Congress.

On Saturday, the president vetoed a decision of the U.S. International Trade Commission for the first time in over 25 years. As a result, the United States will not be imposing an import ban on older iPhones despite the ITC’s finding that Apple infringed certain patents owned by Samsung. This action by the Obama administration is undoubtedly a good development, not just because you will still be able to get a free iPhone 4 when signing a 2-year contract, but because the veto simultaneously disciplines and discredits the ITC’s disruptive role in the U.S. patent system.

The president’s intervention corrects a bad decision by the ITC. The patents that Samsung accused Apple of infringing in the ITC investigation are standard technology required to run phones on a 3G wireless network. Owners of standard-essential patents must agree to license the technology on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms to anyone who asks. Samsung claimed at the ITC that Apple refused to pay any royalties at all, and Apple claimed that Samsung demanded an unreasonable royalty. The ITC sided with Samsung.

The ITC’s ruling has been controversial not because Samsung won the case, but because the ITC’s remedy—total exclusion of the infringing products from the U.S. market—is excessive.

If Samsung had brought its case in federal district court instead of the ITC, the judge would most likely have ordered Apple to pay the royalties it owed Samsung. An injunction against future sales would not be granted, because Samsung never had the right to keep Apple from using the technology in the first place, only to collect royalties.

As I wrote last month in anticipation of a potential presidential veto, this action by the president has a number of policy implications that go beyond the Apple–Samsung patent dispute. The Obama administration, leaders in Congress, and much of the tech industry have been converging lately on the idea that remedies for patent infringement at the ITC are too strict. The ITC should not be able to ban future sales in a situation where a district court would refuse to do the same thing. As it stands now, the ITC’s excessive remedies allow patent holders to wield more power than they should and exacerbate the ongoing struggle against patent trolls.

Korean press coverage of the issue has implied that the administration’s veto of Samsung’s patent victory against Apple amounts to “flagrant protectionism.” In a separate case, the ITC is set to decide later this week whether Samsung infringed patents owned by Apple. If the administration allows an import ban on Samsung products despite intervening to help Apple, many in Korea will surely cry foul.

A trade conflict would be a fitting consequence of mixing patent litigation with trade policy. It doesn’t make sense for President Obama to have the power to intervene in a patent case simply because he doesn’t approve of the outcome. Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, the law that enables the ITC to litigate patents, was designed as a protectionist trade remedy. The president’s veto power is meant to ensure that the ITC’s decisions don’t impede U.S. foreign or economic policy. If the ITC were a legitimate patent court, its decision would not be subject to executive override. The ITC is simply the wrong place to litigate patents, standard-essential or otherwise.

A Wall Street Journal editorial today shines a long overdue spotlight on an antidumping case that is emblematic of the dissonance within U.S. trade policy. I, too, wrote about this case last year as an example of how the U.S. antidumping regime undermines U.S. manufacturing, penalizes U.S. exporters, and diminishes chances for achieving the administration’s goal of doubling exports in five years.

In 2005, U.S. Magnesium Corporation, the sole producer of magnesium in the United States, succeeded in convincing the U.S. International Trade Commission and U.S. Commerce Department to impose duties on imports of magnesium from competitors in Russia and China. Before toasting this outcome with some clichéd or specious utterance about how the antidumping law ensures fair trade and a level playing field for U.S. producers, it is important to understand that downstream, consuming industries (those U.S. producers that require for their own production the raw materials and intermediate goods subject to the antidumping measures) have no legal standing in these cases. Statute forbids the U.S. International Trade Commission from considering their arguments or projections about the likely consequences of prospective duties. Statute requires that the ITC consider only the conditions of the petitioning industry. In other words, the analysis is slanted. The antidumping law codifies these evidentiary asymmetries, which makes it easier for U.S. suppliers to cut-off their U.S. customers’ access to alternative sources of supply. In our increasingly globalized economy, this is a recipe for propping up old industries and discouraging and crippling new ones. It is a recipe for economic decline.

Here’s what I wrote about the impact of the magnesium duties on one formerly promising U.S. growth industry in May 2010:

Consider the case of Spartan Light Metal Products, a small Midwestern producer of aluminum and magnesium engine parts (and other mechanical parts), which presented its story to Obama administration officials, who were dispatched across the country earlier this year to get input from manufacturers about the problems they confronted in export markets.

Beginning in the early-1990s, Spartan shifted its emphasis from aluminum to magnesium die-cast production because magnesium is much lighter and more durable than aluminum, and Spartan’s biggest customers, including Ford, GM, Honda, Mazda, and Toyota were looking to reduce the weight of their vehicles to improve fuel efficiency. Among other products, Spartan produced magnesium intake manifolds for Honda V-6 engines; transmission end and pump covers for GM engines; and oil pans for all of Toyota’s V-8 truck and SUV engines.

But then all of a sudden, in February 2004, an antidumping petition against imports of magnesium from China and Russia was filed by the U.S. industry, which comprised just one producer, U.S. Magnesium Corp. of Utah with about 370 employees. Prices of magnesium alloy rose from slightly more than $1 per pound in February 2004 to about $1.50 per pound one year later, when the U.S. International Trade Commission issued its final determination in the antidumping investigation. By mid-2008, with a dramatic reduction of Chinese and Russian magnesium in the U.S. market, the U.S. price rose to $3.25 per pound (before dropping in 2009 on account of the economic recession).

By January 2010, the U.S. price was $2.30 per pound, while the average price for Spartan’s NAFTA competitors was $1.54. Meanwhile, European magnesium die-casters were paying $1.49 per pound and Chinese competitors were paying $1.36 per pound. According to Spartan’s presentation to Obama administration officials, magnesium accounts for about 40-60% of the total product cost in its industry. Thus, the price differential caused by the antidumping order bestowed a cost advantage of 19 percent on Chinese competitors, 17 percent on European competitors, and 16 percent on NAFTA competitors.

As sure as water runs downhill, several of Spartan’s U.S. competitors went out of business due to their inability to secure magnesium at competitive prices. According to the North American Die Casting Association, the downstream industry lost more than 1,675 manufacturing jobs–more than five-times the number of jobs that even exist in the entire magnesium producing industry!

Spartan’s outlook is bleak, unless it can access magnesium at world market prices. Its customers have turned to imported magnesium die cast parts or have outsourced their own production to locations where they have access to competitively-priced magnesium parts, or they’ve switched to heavier cast materials, sacrificing ergonomics and fuel efficiency in the face of rapidly-approaching, federally-mandated 35.5 mile per gallon fuel efficiency standards.

Thus, antidumping duties on magnesium have almost entirely snuffed out a U.S. growth industry that was succeeding in export markets by selling environmentally-friendlier auto parts—two attributes that really should make this a showcase industry, given the administration’s stated goals.

But on trade policy formulation, it seems that the right hand doesn’t always know what the left hand is doing. Last year, while magnesium imports from China were subject to U.S. antidumping duties, the Obama administration launched a WTO case against China for its restraints on exports of raw materials, including magnesium. That’s right. The U.S. government officially opposes China’s tax on exported magnesium because it imposes extra costs of U.S. consuming industries, but it insists on enforcing its own antidumping duties on magnesium imported from China despite those costs.

As if that is not enough dissonance, consider that the same U.S. Commerce Department that authorized the antidumping duties on magnesium is simultaneously charged with overseeing the National Export Initiative (and its goal of doubling U.S. exports to $3.14 trillion by 2015). The Commerce secretary, Gary Locke, was even featured in Washington Post profile piece Sunday preaching about the national imperative to boost exports. Is Secretary Locke even aware of the incongruities under his roof?

The WSJ editorial concludes with a call to revoke the antidumping duties on magnesium, which is under consideration in a “Sunset Review.” (Regrettably, as presented in this analysis from 2005, revocation pursuant to sunset review is more the excepton than the rule.). I agree with the WSJ’s conclusion, but would implore policymakers to go further and implement sweeping reform of the antidumping law. It is extremely costly to U.S. industry and totally out-of-step with 21st century economic reality. As I wrote last year:

Spartan’s is not an isolated incident. Routinely, the U.S. antidumping law is more punitive toward U.S. manufacturers than it is to the presumed foreign targets. Routinely, U.S. producers of upstream products respond to their customers’ needs for better pricing, not by becoming more efficient or cooperative, but by working to cripple their access to foreign supplies. More and more frequently, that is how and why the antidumping law is used in the United States. Increasingly, it is a weapon used by American producers against their customers—other American producers, many of whom are exporters.

If President Obama really wants to see exports double, he must implore Congress to change the antidumping law to explicitly give standing to downstream industries so that their interests can be considered in trade remedies cases. He must implore Congress to include a public interest provision requiring the U.S. International Trade Commission to assess the costs of any duties on downstream industries and on the broader economy before imposing any such duties.

The imperative of U.S. export growth demands some degree of sanity be restored to our business-crippling trade remedies regime

If the administration were serious about making trade policy work—rather than just paying it lip service—it would compile its own exhaustive list of laws, regulations, policies, and practices that actually undermine its stated objectives of facilitating economic growth, investment, and job creation through expanded trade opportunities. Then, it would make the changes necessary to ensure that our policies are paddling in the same direction. But that is not happening—at least as far as I can see.

At the beginning of the year, President Obama announced his goal of doubling U.S. exports in five years. He even formalized the goal by granting it an official name—the National Export Initiative. Well, I see no imminent harm in setting the ambitious goal of reaching $3 billion in exports by 2015 (although I am wary of the tactics under consideration and the evocation of Soviet Five-Year Plans). But it betrays a lack of true commitment to that goal when nothing is being done to reduce the competitive burdens imposed on U.S. exporters by our own myopic, anachronistic trade remedies regime. The president exhorts U.S. exporters to win a global race, yet he overlooks the fact that Congress has tied many of their shoes together.

The costs of the U.S. Antidumping and Countervailing Duty laws on U.S. exporters are manifest in various forms, but this post concerns the burdens imposed on U.S. producer/exporters who rely on the raw materials and other industrial inputs that are subject to AD and CVD measures. Indeed, most of the products subject to the 300 U.S. AD and CVD orders currently in effect (like steel and chemicals) are, in fact, inputs to downstream U.S. producers, many of whom compete (or try to compete) in foreign markets. (Just take a look at this list and decide for yourself whether these are products that you’d buy at the store or if they are inputs a U.S. producer would use to produce something else that you might buy at a store.)

AD and CVD duties squeeze these U.S. producer/exporters’ profits, first by raising their input costs and then by depriving them of revenues lost to foreign competitors, who, by producing outside of the United States, have access to that crucial input at lower world-market prices, and can themselves price more competitively. This is not hypothetical. It is a routine hindrance for U.S. exporters. And one that has eluded the president’s attention, despite his soaring rhetoric about the economic importance of U.S. exports.

Consider the case of Spartan Light Metal Products, a small Midwestern producer of aluminum and magnesium engine parts (and other mechanical parts), which presented its story to Obama administration officials, who were dispatched across the country earlier this year to get input from manufacturers about the problems they confronted in export markets.

Beginning in the early-1990s, Spartan shifted its emphasis from aluminum to magnesium die-cast production because magnesium is much lighter and more durable than aluminum, and Spartan’s biggest customers, including Ford, GM, Honda, Mazda, and Toyota were looking to reduce the weight of their vehicles to improve fuel efficiency. Among other products, Spartan produced magnesium intake manifolds for Honda V-6 engines; transmission end and pump covers for GM engines; and oil pans for all of Toyota’s V-8 truck and SUV engines.

But then all of a sudden, in February 2004, an antidumping petition against imports of magnesium from China and Russia was filed by the U.S. industry, which comprised just one producer, U.S. Magnesium Corp. of Utah with about 370 employees. Prices of magnesium alloy rose from slightly more than $1 per pound in February 2004 to about $1.50 per pound one year later, when the U.S. International Trade Commission issued its final determination in the antidumping investigation. By mid-2008, with a dramatic reduction of Chinese and Russian magnesium in the U.S. market, the U.S. price rose to $3.25 per pound (before dropping in 2009 on account of the economic recession).

By January 2010, the U.S. price was $2.30 per pound, while the average price for Spartan’s NAFTA competitors was $1.54. Meanwhile, European magnesium die-casters were paying $1.49 per pound and Chinese competitors were paying $1.36 per pound. According to Spartan’s presentation to Obama administration officials, magnesium accounts for about 40-60% of the total product cost in its industry. Thus, the price differential caused by the antidumping order bestowed a cost advantage of 19 percent on Chinese competitors, 17 percent on European competitors, and 16 percent on NAFTA competitors.

As sure as water runs downhill, several of Spartan’s U.S. competitors went out of business due to their inability to secure magnesium at competitive prices. According to the North American Die Casting Association, the downstream industry lost more than 1,675 manufacturing jobs–more than five-times the number of jobs that even exist in the entire magnesium producing industry!

Spartan’s outlook is bleak, unless it can access magnesium at world market prices. Its customers have turned to imported magnesium die cast parts or have outsourced their own production to locations where they have access to competitively-priced magnesium parts, or they’ve switched to heavier cast materials, sacrificing ergonomics and fuel efficiency in the face of rapidly-approaching, federally-mandated 35.5 mile per gallon fuel efficiency standards.

And to add insult to injury, the Obama administration recently launched a WTO case against China for its restraints on exports of raw materials, including magnesium. Allegedly, since January 2008, the Chinese government has been imposing a 10 percent tax on magnesium exports. How dissonant, how incongruous, how absolutely imbecilic it is that, in the face of China’s own restraints on its exports (which the U.S. government officially opposes), the U.S. antidumping order against imported magnesium from China persists! How stupid. How short-sighted.

Spartan’s is not an isolated incident. Routinely, the U.S. antidumping law is more punitive toward U.S. manufacturers than it is to the presumed foreign targets. Routinely, U.S. producers of upstream products respond to their customers’ needs for better pricing, not by becoming more efficient or cooperative, but by working to cripple their access to foreign supplies. More and more frequently, that is how and why the antidumping law is used in the United States. Increasingly, it is a weapon used by American producers against their customers—other American producers, many of whom are exporters.

If President Obama really wants to see exports double, he must implore Congress to change the antidumping law to explicitly give standing to downstream industries so that their interests can be considered in trade remedies cases. He must implore Congress to include a public interest provision requiring the U.S. International Trade Commission to assess the costs of any duties on downstream industries and on the broader economy before imposing any such duties.

The imperative of U.S. export growth demands some degree of sanity be restored to our business-crippling trade remedies regime.

In the latest example of “We had to burn the village to save it” logic, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) argues in a letter in the Washington Post this morning that the way to “support more trade” in the future is to raise barriers to trade today.

Brown criticizes Post columnist George Will for criticizing President Obama for imposing new tariffs on imported tires from China. Like President Obama himself, Brown claims that by invoking the Section 421 safeguard, the president was merely “enforcing” the trade laws that China agreed to but has failed to follow. He scolds advocates of trade for talking about the “rule of law” but failing to enforce it when it comes to trade agreements. Brown concludes, “If America is ever to support more trade, its people need to know that the rules will be enforced. And Mr. Obama did exactly that.”

Nothing in U.S. trade law required President Obama to impose tariffs on imported Chinese tires. As my colleague Dan Ikenson explained in a recent Free Trade Bulletin, Section 421 allows private parties to petition the U.S. government for protection if rising imports from China have caused or just threaten to cause “market disruption” to domestic producers. If the U.S. International Trade Commission recommends tariff relief, the president can decide to impose tariffs, or not.

The law allows the president to refrain from imposing tariffs if he finds they are “not in the national economic interest of the United States or … would cause serious harm to the national security of the United States.”

As I argue at length in my new Cato book Mad about Trade, trade barriers invariably damage our national economic interests and weaken our national security, and the tire tariffs are no exception. If the president had followed the letter and spirit of the law, he would have rejected the tariff.

And since when is causing “market disruption” something to be punished by law? Isn’t that what capitalism and market competition are all about? New competitors and new products are constantly disrupting markets, to the discomfort of entrenched producers but to the great benefit of the general public and the economy as a whole.

Human beings once widely practiced an economic system that minimized market disruption. It was called feudalism.

Last week I recommended reading a new paper published by the Lowy Institute in Australia, which proposes an utterly sensible reform for the G-20, if curbing protectionism is a serious aim.

Using Australia’s own successful experience as an example, the authors recommend other countries adopt “domestic transparency” programs, which would essentially include analysis from an independent, apolitical board or agency that measures the real costs and benefits of proposed trade restrictions.

The findings of these independent reviews would be accessible to the public—and probably published in newspapers and other popular media—in advance of any decision to impose or reject the proposed trade restrictions. The findings wouldn’t legally bind the authorities to take any particular action, but would help chase from the shadows the real costs of protectionism, so that those ultimately making the decision know that the public at large is aware of the costs.

When a politician knows that he/she can benefit politically by imposing import duties, the costs of which are hidden in higher prices paid by consumers, who are unlikely to make the causal connection, there is a profound asymmetry of incentives and disincentives. The politician is much more likely to choose to secure the political benefit of imposing duties since the costs are hidden. But if light is shone on those costs, through domestic transparency initiatives, that asymmetry is reduced or eliminated. Politicians, under these circumstances, can go back to the special interests and say how much they’d like to help out with a tariff, but the costs don’t justify the measure. And the protection-seekers know the politician’s hands are tied because the public is aware of those costs.

Well, Alan Mitchell of the Australian Financial Review on Monday supposed how the presence of a domestic transparency regime would have affected President Obama’s tire tariff decision. It is very instructive:

The case of the Chinese tyres provides a striking example. The action was taken under a section of the US Trade Act popularly known as the “China-specific safeguard” provision. The act allows increased import duties if the imports cause, or even just threaten, material injury to US producers. If material injury is identified, the president must take action against the imports unless he determines that the “provision of such relief is not in the national economic interest.”

The US International Trade Commission (ITC) publicly advises the president on the issue of material injury, and on the level of trade barriers needed to stop it, but not on the question of the national economic interest.

The president is left to determine that for himself. And the public is aware of nothing but the ITC-endorsed case for protection….

Suppose the ITC had been asked to also publicly advise the President on whether action against Chinese tyres was in the national economic interest. There is no doubt about what its advice would have been. The duties on Chinese tyres will save some jobs among US producers of low-cost tyres, but at the price of propping up uneconomic producers, and at the cost of jobs lost among US tyre retailers and in other sectors of the economy….

Had the ITC advised that action was against the national economic interest, the President would have been in a much stronger position to reject the demand, if he had wanted to. He may not have wanted to, of course….

The US action against Chinese tyres was initiated by a complaint from the unions that are an important part of Obama’s support base. But even if Obama had protected the tyre makers against the advice of the ITC, an important blow still would have been struck against protectionism. The American people would have heard the truth from an unimpeachable source: the protection of inefficient tyre makers is against the US economic interest….

It would have been a small but important step towards educating and changing public opinion. And, without that, multilateral trade reform will never gain the domestic political support it needs to bring down trade barriers in agriculture and services.

This is what could have been had ”domestic transparency” already been embraced in the United States. See the point in such a reform?

Earlier this month, the Lowy Institute in Australia published a paper offering some very sound and, obviously, very timely advice about how to contain, and ultimately, eradicate protectionism. The paper is being circulated among the G20 delegations, who will undoubtedly discuss the topic of trade and protectionism in Pittsburgh next week. So for those of you interested in getting a sense of what will probably be the single best idea on (or at least near) the table at the G20 summit, I highly recommend this 20-pager.

The solution proposed by the authors boils down to a two-word phrase: “Domestic Transparency.” What is meant by that phrase is that “defeating protectionism begins at home.” And by that slogan, the authors mean that the key to reducing, and ultimately eliminating, protectionism is not external pressure from other countries, mercantilist trade negotiations, or filing trade complaints at the WTO, but rather greater awareness at home of the real costs of protectionism. I couldn’t agree more. (In fact better transparency is one of our recommendations in this paper).

When governments impose trade barriers at the behest of special interests, they usually justify that protectionism with diversionary rhetoric concerning some vague conception of the “national interest,” and the imperative of shielding domestic business from unfair competition and other vagaries of the globalized economy. That the protectionist measure itself—the product of special interests diverting productive resources from economic to political ends—forces involuntary and usually unknowing subsidization of those protection-seekers by the same citizens at large who are expected to buy into the national interest canard is a detail about which most people remain in the dark.

The central theme of the Lowy paper is that once people become informed about the costs of protectionism, not only to the broader economy, but in terms of what it means for their own personal budgets, politicians and lobbyists will find it much more difficult to concoct protectionist schemes.

That this paper is written by Australians is no accident. The Aussies have experience and credibility implementing a successful domestic transparency regime, which entailed the establishment of an independent authority (independent from the levers of government and business) to provide advice to governments that is “disinterested, open to public scrutiny, and formulated from the perspective of national welfare rather than the needs of particular producer groups.” The establishment of that agency (oddly named the “Industries Assistance Commission”—one of the authors, Bill Carmichael, is the former Chairman of the IAC) in 1974 and its successor agency (also oddly named the “Productivity Commission”) are widely credited with exposing the costs of protectionism to Australians, who subsequently supported dramatic waves of trade liberalization and have since been skeptical of efforts of industries to secure protection.

In this country, the U.S. International Trade Commission is an agency with a stable of economists that measures the welfare effects of trade liberalization and protectionism. While it may have the resources to conduct the analyses, it doesn’t have the independence. Regrettably, ITC studies are often subject to the whims of politics, particularly when the objectivity and facts in their reports don’t comport with politicians’ “expectations.” We need something similar to Australia’s domestic transparency institution in the United States, and in other countries, too.